Down the River

It's been awhile and now I'm in the middle of the river. Unlike any place I know, when I'm driving the streets that are so familiar, praising the gateway of trees, blocking out all the cars and houses along the way - I am in the boat now, on the river.

Aside from taking stock and inventory of every item I own, wrapping it all in shrouds of paper, putting it in the ground, box after box after box, stacked along walls and walls and walls, I nod to all my friends this morning as I make my way through the neighborhood - the hillside, the row of three stately protector trees, the rise in the pavement, lifting me every time to imagine how it must have looked one hundred years ago. Maybe I'm mistaken, but I thought they waved as I passed.

And then, parking across from Peet's I watch the mist rise over the north hills as a haunting and beautiful Sanskrit chant unfurls from the speakers in the car. Good bye is not a moment. Not this time. For all the years I took off at midnight to avoid confrontation with the love of friendship - the deep, abiding, pull your heart apart love of friendship - now I understand and am trying to honor my tribe as primal and not free, not broken, not transient. I think to myself that I must have walked this land before with just these people around me - what else would cause a pain of separation like this?

I walk across the street and head for the homeless guy that I have hated. Hated to know. Hated to care about. Hated to hear him ask for money every single day. Hated to give him the decency to tell me his daily joke. Hated that he calls me angel and sweetheart and darlin. I say to him, "Franklin, I'm leaving. I'm going away. And I'm really going to miss you. And I want to know that you'll be ok." He opens his arms wide and I fall into them and we hold that embrace and I think - who are we that we care for each other this much? He says, "Angel, you take care, hear me? God bless you." This man, I imagine as a boy down south, as I wait for my latte inside. He once told me that his name comes from his grandfather, whose name came from his father, all decendant slaves of Ben Franklin, who never having had children, named all his slaves Franklin.

Om Namah Shivaya Gurave
Niralambaya Tejase
Om Namah Shivaya Gurave
Sacchinananda Murtaye.....

I sing and whisper and silently turn this chant around the emptying rooms, in and around the recesses of my mind, ladel it over the top of my heart - bathing. Lift my voice like warm rose water, pour a wave of reassurance over the heart, down the body, tucked around cold limbs in bed at night. And it's getting me down the river. Into the current. Let go. Let be. Let go. Remember to breathe.

Some phone calls I cannot answer. An old lover, the thought of whom just makes me ache - so I imagine calling, walking through his tea shop, meeting his gaze, and offering my gratitude. That's all I can do for now. I don't stop loving, nor do I want to stop. I just let it ripen.

In the mix I can't track my direction, just the sensation of movement in many directions at once. There is departure and arrival, though I haven't set foot in the moving truck yet. There is the understanding of change and then, mysteriously, the emergence of what never changes.

Yesterday I sat again with the scholar of Indian philosophy. Hours into discourse, I write on my note pad that if I were to lie down on the grass and my skin fell away, if all my blood watered the soil, and my bones sank into silt far below the suface - and I could listen to these ancient teachings - my soul would send forth tendrils and shoots of flowers, beautifully content in their expression, happy to exist simply for the listening.

I fell asleep. For the last number of years. Is it marriage and motherhood? Not sure. But I am waking up. For all the tremendous lack of sleep, I am waking up. In the middle of the river.